AMD Confirms AMD Dual-Core Opteron Launch on the 21st of April

Advanced Micro Devices CEO Hector Ruiz said Wednesday during the company’s first quarter fiscal 2005 conference call that the company’s first server dual-core chips with two processing engines will be formally announced on the 21st of April, 2005.

“As some of you may know, we are ahead of schedule on our dual-core AMD Opteron processors. In fact, we’ve been shipping samples to customers since January… Therefore, in response to customer demand and because of our rapid qualification cycle we can confirm that we will indeed be launching our highly-anticipated AMD Opteron dual-core processor, the industry’s first x86 dual-core server processor, in New York next Thursday,” said Hector Ruiz, CEO and Chairman of AMD.

AMD’s dual-core server processor will have dual-channel DDR memory controller, 2MB L2 cache (1MB of cache per core) and will fit into Socket 940 mainboards provided that they were made according to all AMD’s thermal and voltage guidelines and have a BIOS to support dual-core central processing units.

The probable prospective plan of Advanced Micro Devices suggests that AMD will launch AMD Opteron 200- and 800-series dual-core processors at 1.80GHz, 2.0GHz and 2.20GHz with 95W thermal design power (TDP) in the second quarter of 2005.

AMD plans to firstly unveil its server-aimed dual-core Opteron processors and then follow with desktop-oriented dual-core Athlon 64 chip in the second half of the year because it believes server applications will benefit from additional core more than desktop software, as server programs are typically tailored for machines running two or more processors. Intel intends to commercially release its desktop Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition chips in May, 2005, with dual-engine Xeon processor for servers entering the market in early 2006.